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Sovereign Bodies: Conspiracy Theories, Masculinities, and Statecraft
Abstract
This paper focuses on how ordinary men circulate conspiracy theories to forge themselves as political subjects and, in the process, overgrow their bodily extents as agents of the state. The analysis particularly focuses on conspiratorial accounts that imagine threats targeting the corporeality of men, such as genetically-modified seeds, and underline how bodies of everyday actors become the interfaces upon which state power is issued forth. The paper concludes with a discussion on how the circulation of conspiracy theories engenders vigilantism and paramilitary violence in contemporary Turkey and how masculine bodies become the primary sites of this radical reconfiguration.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies